Bolivia Detains Chief of Airline in Colombia Crash

The Bolivian authorities said Wednesday that they had detained the chief executive of the airline whose plane crashed in the mountains of Colombia last week, killing 71 people, including members of the Brazilian soccer team Chapecoense.

Gustavo Vargas, the chief executive of the airline, LaMia, was taken into custody on Tuesday, the Bolivian prosecutor’s office announced. Two other airline employees were detained but later released, it added.

The arrests indicated that the inquiry into the crash, which left only six survivors and stunned the region, was widening. Investigators also said they had seized files from the offices of the airline.

Prosecutors from Colombia and Brazil said this week that they were coordinating with their Bolivian counterparts to determine whether LaMia had proper licensing to fly and warned that they might consider criminal charges.

Carlos Jaime Taborga, a Colombian prosecutor, said investigators hoped to determine exactly “who is responsible for this tragedy so that they pay the price.”

The plane, which was carrying 77 people, including journalists and crew members, crashed late on Nov. 28 outside Medellín. The Chapecoense team, from the city of Chapecó, had been flying from Santa Cruz, Bolivia, to play the finals match for the Copa Sudamericana, a major championship in South America.

Investigators also said they were looking into the role of Celia Castedo, an airline official at the Santa Cruz airport, who has fled to Brazil. In records leaked to Bolivian news media, Ms. Castedo is said to have advised the pilot of the plane against flying to Medellín on the grounds that the distance was too far. The plane was allowed to take off, despite the concerns.

Bolivian officials said this week that that they were seeking Ms. Castedo’s extradition. Brazilian officials, quoted in local news reports, said Ms. Castedo had been granted temporary asylum after she said she had fled because of threats to her life.

Last week, recordings released to Colombian radio appeared to capture the last minutes of the flight, in which a voice identified as the pilot’s asked for an emergency landing because the plane had run out of fuel. Rescue workers said they were surprised that there had not been a fiery explosion upon impact, indicating that the jetliner’s tanks were empty.

According to specifications from the plane’s manufacturer, BAE Systems, the Avro RJ85 jet flown by LaMia has a range of about 1,600 nautical miles, close to the distance of the flight. Jetliners, however, rarely travel in straight lines to their destinations.

Samuel Montaño, a Bolivian expert on military equipment and aviation, said a flight on that route would ordinarily have made a stop at Cobija, a Bolivian town in the Amazon Basin. The purpose of the stop would not only be to refuel, but also to allow the engines to cool off, another safety precaution, he said.